Despite advances in many areas of technology, there are still barriers to assessing the relative health of a person in a rapid, cost effective, and timely manner. With the increase in health care costs and prevalence of diseases related to unhealthy lifestyles such as diabetes and heart disease, it is important to assess the relative health of individuals, and this has not been adequately addressed. In many areas of the world, access to doctors is limited. Even in the developed world, a doctor's time is considered a precious commodity and there are often long waiting lists and doctor-to-specialist referral systems have to be navigated before being seen. In more developed countries the ratio of doctors to the population may be on the order of 1:1,000 persons, while in less developed countries the ratio may be 1:100,000. There are also cost barriers to having access to a doctor because an appointment with a doctor can be very expensive, especially if an individual does not have any health insurance or lacks sufficient coverage. Accordingly, it can be very difficult to gain access to medical professionals in order to receive information about one's health.
Even if an individual had access to his or her health information, the mechanisms for conveying that information to others is lacking or non-existent. Privacy laws restrict the type of information that can be shared and the manner in which it can be shared. Privacy laws relating to health information are particularly strict in regard to the information that can be shared. This is to protect a person from disclosure of sensitive information. Accordingly, the sharing of health related information is generally discouraged. It is also difficult to share health related information with friends and family. Often health information is only verbally conveyed by a doctor to a patient, or the patient will only receive paper copies of lab test results. Systems are lacking for easily sharing such information with others, especially with large groups of persons located in geographically remote locations.
Prior art systems that provide a limited type of numerical score which is related to a person's health have been disclosed. For example, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2009/0105550 to Rothman et al. discloses a system and method for providing a health score for a patient. However, this disclosure is primarily directed to calculating a health score of a patient in a hospital, post surgery, and the health score is based on medical data measured from the patient (e.g., blood pressure, temperature, respiration, etc.). This method fails to take into account the extrinsic activities of the patient, such as the daily physical exercise activities of the patient. U.S. Patent Publication No. 2005/0228692 to Hodgdon discloses a system that calculates a health score based on measured medical data and can include a self assessment survey, which can include surveying a participant's exercise habits. However, this only takes into account a person's purported habits, not the actual exercise activity that a person engages in each day. Accordingly, the score is static and does not change in relation to actual activity performed.
Such disclosed systems are primarily directed to medical practitioners for addressing issues in continuity of care and require input from practitioners in order to produce and maintain scores. Clearly, while the attention of a medical practitioner is needed in emergency and critical care situations, cost and resource factors mean that such systems are usable only in such situations and such systems do not address the general issues discussed above. Additionally, the score is only relevant to the particular instant in time at which it was last updated by the medical practitioner.